


If There's A Prize For Rotten Judgment

by RobinLorin



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Gen, Oblivious Laurence, One-Sided Attraction, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/pseuds/RobinLorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Granby despaired of Laurence ever noticing that Granby sometimes stared at him like he was the sun and Granby was a thrill-seeker with wax wings. But then the moment ended, usually because it was time for Granby to intervene and persuade Laurence to act upon the lesser of two harebrained schemes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If There's A Prize For Rotten Judgment

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the #Temeraire2015 exchange, and specifically for odense! Their prompt was, "Granby and Tharkay bonding over the human disaster that is Laurence." Enjoy! 
> 
> Warning for slight canon racism from Granby.

There weren’t enough inverts in the service.

It was a fact that Granby often bemoaned in the privacy of his own head. There was mutual understanding, of course. Few men who entered the aerial corps planned to marry, and with so many ready hands nearby there was nothing salacious about helping a fellow out. Others used their furroughs wisely; yet others founds comfort in unrequited pining. There were more aviators than one might think who were in love with their captains; certainly the numbers were higher in a corps that promoted women to captaincy.

Nevertheless Granby found himself with very little company who understood the precise anguish of serving under Captain Laurence.

A depressingly small circle of male aviators who found pleasure in the company of men were willing to be open about their preference, and fewer still were willing to listen to Granby’s increasingly hysterical discourses on Laurence’s form, his hair, his ridiculous neckcloths, his sense of honor…

Granby could go on. Often, fueled by a pint too many, he did.

“He just _looks after_ his crew,” he’d try to explain, gesturing emphatically and endangering his tablemates’ drinks.

“‘S what a captain’s supposed to do,” Jacobs would say, shrugging.

Granby would snort. What did Jacobs know anyway? “Not like him. He’s - when he _looks_ at you. And his fucking _eye crinkles_.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it bad, mate,” Jacobs or another would say, and Granby’s ramblings would be dismissed as pure lovesickness. The lads would move onto a better topic, like where the new Mollys were hawking their trade. They all assumed that Granby was a besotted romantic, and let him be.

It was impossible to explain the sheer force of Laurence’s presence. The eye crinkles, that was part of it; but no words in Granby’s limited, dragonback-schooled vocabulary could capture the pleased satisfaction in his captain’s eyes when Laurence found his crew properly outfitted and with all the carabiners and ropes in place on Temeraire’s back; or his delight when the crew performed a new maneuver perfectly for Maximus.

All the crew felt the effect; all had learned to read the sunny approval that was just barely masked under the proper indifference borne of a career of suppressing mutiny with sternness. It was nearly impossible to remain indifferent in the face of Laurence’s bright force. Granby challenged any fool to serve with Temeraire and not fall in love with his captain. Granby was sure he was not alone in his need to win that pleased look from Laurence as often as he could; all the crew flourished under Laurence’s instruction.

He did suspect that he was the only one on their crew who would gladly receive much more intimate instructions from Laurence.

Not that Laurence would ever pick up on it.

But that number, he suspected, was changing. Tharkay wasn’t properly one of their crew, but Granby would be willing to bet that it was a soon thing. Was betting, in fact; one of the harness men had a fiver riding on either Temeraire or the captain adopting Tharkay within a month.

Granby didn’t think it would take that long.

Years of preserving his reputation as a decent, if not noble, gentleman, while sneaking down to the Madge-cove on his leave, had cultivated in Granby a near-preternatural sense for particular looks exchanged by men when their thoughts strayed into deviance. Granby was always on alert for signs that a man suspected Granby of unwelcome advances, but he could also read receptive signals from a room away. More infrequent, though just as recognizable, were the looks that meant that a man was suddenly confronted by his own inversion.

Laurence inspired a depressingly large number of the latter.

The glances that Tharkay stole at Laurence were none of the above. Tharkay’s perplexed, rebellious glances were nearly identical to the tight mask of anger and disbelief that Granby had worn for the first three months of his posting on Temeraire’s crew.

Granby wasn’t ignorant of the irony that he empathized with the possible cutthroat who might be leading Laurence’s entire crew into a trap, or worse, planning to abandon them in the desert to wither and die. He knew the intricacies of this stage of befuddlement-by-Laurence: Tharkay would see a spark of decency in Laurence; in how he handled the crew; how he talked to Roland and Dyer. He would notice Laurence’s tactical mind (and his tight breeches), and the entire time he’d be hating himself for his admiration while Laurence found fault in his manners and his code of conduct.

 _Tharkay would understand about the eye crinkles_ , Granby found himself thinking in their third week in the desert. Dehydration, no doubt.

He would almost feel sorry for the man, if he weren’t infuriating Granby beyond reason and leaving camp in the middle of the night only to turn up days later with bands of horse thieves and the like.

It was almost like divine justice, delivered by Heaven’s fittest and most oblivious angel, when Laurence began to focus his attention solely on the man. Granby watched from a corner of the feral dragon’s cave, grateful that his slight dizziness from the avalanche gave him a chance to eavesdrop covertly, as Laurence directed the full force of his gaze at Tharkay, his face shining cautious trust in the man despite his brisk tone. Granby remembered that look; it had been the one directed at him every time Granby took the crew through a perfect practice flight while exchanging only cold “Yes, sir”s with his newly appointed captain. Every time Granby had received the full brunt of that face, he had died a little inside.

 _Take that, you oriental bastard_ , Granby thought viciously. _It’s what you deserve._ You _can deal with Laurence’s unbridled hope in humanity for a while._

He kept an eye on Tharkay as they continued their travels, now with the addition of a dozen ferals that Tharkay could somehow talk to with odd clicks and babble. His watch was altered, now; Granby’s internal monologue was largely a stream of schadenfreude as Tharkay obviously found himself drawn in toward Laurence.

 _Serves you right, leading us all over Hell’s sandpit and back_ , he thought, watching Tharkay lean over the map he and Laurence were discussing, until his hair almost brushed Laurence’s brow. Granby chuckled to himself as Tharkay pulled back, his eyes flickering to Laurence’s lips, and then to his eyes to see if he’d noticed. He hadn’t.

He never did.

 _Just you wait_ , Granby thought at Tharkay.

The other man’s eyes flickered toward Granby, fast as a thrown knife. Granby started. 

Tharkay raised a single thin eyebrow.

Granby busied himself with the dragon eggs, pretending he hadn’t noticed the long plane of Tharkay’s cheekbone, or the nimble fingers that traced lines on the map. He was just amusing himself with the man’s obvious infatuation. There was no need to bring _feelings_ into it. Because if he stopped laughing…

Oh, Hell.

He’d have to feel _sorry_ for Tharkay.

And feeling sorry for Tharkay mean that Granby’d have to dwell on his own failures to seduce - no, to even attract the attention - of the captain. For God’s sake, Granby had saved Laurence from falling to his death at least half a dozen times, most of those incidents involved Laurence clinging to Granby’s shirtfront and breathing very hard very close to Granby’s mouth. If Laurence hadn’t had any sexual revelations at fifteen hundred metres, he wasn’t bloody likely to exchange his brotherly camaraderie for lustful passions in the middle of a great wasteland of a desert.

Granby was not going to feel sorry for Tharkay. He was _not_.

Granby lost the struggle only a few weeks later, when his captain and his erstwhile guide scrambled over the wall of the Turkish palace, out of breath and stinking to high Heaven of sewer-rot. Laurence had a grim look on his face, one that usually bore ill news for their chances of getting out of a situation without being skewered by various weapons or dragon claws. Tharkay, however, was the most changed: a pall that Granby hadn’t known he’d worn had lifted, leaving his eyes bright and his movements lively. He had a sort of a dazed air about him, his gaze constantly returning to Laurence despite his usual dry comments. Even when Laurence shared the news of their situation, with Tharkay contributing his own observations, the man kept looking at Laurence like he was a puzzle that Tharkay had tried to put together all wrong.

 _Knock it off_ , Granby wanted to tell him. _Everyone will see how gone you are on him, and aviators might not care much but by God, man, it’s embarrassing._

Besides, Temeraire might notice and remark on it with his characteristic candor.

He couldn’t muster up the proper indignation, though. All the sweet little angels in Heaven’s choir knew that Laurence would never notice the looks, and with that danger gone and the aviators indifferent to little things like sodomy laws and social mores, there was no reason not to be as openly admiring of Laurence as one could be. Granby had been living like that for long enough; he was an expert on the subject.

There was no reason to be hard on the poor fellow when he was already under the pressure of Laurence’s sheer proximity.

He was also aware of Laurence casting surreptitious glances at Tharkay - not, despite Granby’s half-hope and half-dread, in a romantic light; but a thoughtful one. Granby knew this look, too.

“God above,” he groaned to Keynes, who was unimpressed by the dramatics. “He’s adopted another stray.”

“I might be offended at the comparison,” Tharkay’s voice sounded from behind the pair, “if Captain Laurence had not just assured me that no such sentiments of racial condescension existed among the aviators.”

Granby turned. Tharkay was wearing his customary cold-eyed smirk which Granby had always assumed was his natural expression. Now that he’d seen Tharkay bat his lashes at Laurence, Granby wasn’t all too impressed.

“Don’t be a pillock,” he said. “Listen. You’ve got to watch out.” Behind Tharkay, Laurence was stripping to the waist and plunging into the small decorative pond to wash off the stink of the sewers.

Tharkay stiffened. “If that’s a threat, I’ve no intention of interrupting your - “

“That’s how he got me,” Granby continued conversationally. If Tharkay wasn’t going to seek advice, Granby would at least make sure he took some. “You think he’s a stuck-up nobleman’s son with a head thick as a dragon’s hide, and then he asks to shake your hand and tells you he wants you on his side.”

Tharkay tried to pretend he wasn’t surprised at Granby’s insight. As if Granby didn’t know exactly how Laurence operated.

“And all of a sudden you’re following him into Chinese courts and across barren wastelands” - with questionable guides, Granby didn’t say, but he thought Tharkay heard it all the same - “because he trusts you. And because…”

Granby looked past Tharkay pointedly, to where Laurence was dabbing about, shirtless and - even better, cravat-less - in the small pond. Tharkay turned around and froze, with a strangled gurgle escaping from his throat.

“Exactly,” Granby sighed. He clapped a hand on Tharkay’s shoulder as he strode toward the pond that Laurence was now climbing out of with a helping claw from Temeraire. Laurence would want to confer about the Sultan’s motives, and according the Laurence there was no better time to do so than when soaking wet and half-naked. Granby wasn’t complaining.

Granby was well acquainted with the series of escalating encounters that Tharkay engineered in the weeks that followed. The crew was tense and downcast, at the loss of one of their own - and so young, at that - but Tharkay was finding ways to incorporate himself about Laurence’s person. Granby had to appreciate the initiative; after all, opportune chances for seduction rarely made themselves known. Men must make their own time. Especially men with such impossible challenges as seducing William Laurence.

Tharkay kept to his mysterious and soft-spoken habits, the better to cause Laurence to lean in close when Tharkay spoke. Granby was sure that Tharkay’s breath stirred the hairs on the nape of Laurence’s neck, but if so Laurence was too well-bred to show it.

Tharkay often made soft, wry comments under the spell of twilight, when just enough light touched the sky to highlight his sharp cheekbones and set his dark eyes blazing. If Laurence noticed how much Tharkay was looking through his eyelashes at him, he politely declined from asking if Tharkay had a stiff neck.

Tharkay went to his bedroll one night without his outer coat. Granby had to look away quickly when Tharkay stretched obscenely, his shirt riding up to expose a strip of tight stomach muscle. He caught sight of Laurence, who was frowning at Tharkay in confusion. A minute later, he asked if Tharkay wouldn’t be cold without his coat on.

In some desperation, Tharkay resorted to dropping his pencil during their times spent poring over the map. Laurence showed saintly patience for Tharkay’s fumbling fingers and his tendency to pick up his pencil.... very… slowly.

If he kept this up, Temeraire was going to start asking very loud questions.

Once, while straightening from an impressively close distance from Laurence’s face, Tharkay’s eyes flickered over Laurence’s shoulder and caught Granby’s gaze. He didn’t quite smirk, but the lack of guilt or embarrassment in his expression seemed to come as a challenge.

Granby ground his teeth.

The next evening, as the crew choked down their breakfast and readied Temeraire’s harness, Granby approached Laurence at the pail that served as a water basin and all-purpose cleaning station. The water had been taken from a nearby stream the night before, and had frozen overnight; Granby could see goosepimples on Laurence’s bare arms as he splashed the water onto his face.

“Laurence,” he said, close enough for another patch of goosepimples to stand up on Laurence’s neck from the feel of Granby’s breath - closer than he usually stood, but no further than Tharkay. “Willoughby says the straps will hold, but he’s working on carving another carabiner strap from what leather he can spare, just in case.”

“Good,” said Laurence, muffled, into a towel over his face. He lowered it, blinking water out of his eyelashes. “We should expect trouble from the local patrols, though we don’t wish for it.”

Granby nodded grimly. “Laurence,” he said, as though it had just caught his attention, “your plait is a mess.”

“What?” Laurence rain his hand over his hair, which truthfully had not seen close care since he last bathed in the pool at the Sultan’s palace. Over the course of their journey, the close-cropped cut had sprouted into a mane that barely conceded to a plait.

“You’re hardly the image of a proper captain without a real plait,” Granby said, letting his natural amusement at Laurence’s ideas of propriety color his tone.

Laurence searched Granby’s face for a moment to ascertain if he was the subject of sport. Laurence’s upbringing had been a sore point with them in the past; Granby knew that Laurence was wary of unwittingly embarrassing Granby with their noticeable differences in manners.

 _Take that_ , Granby thought to Tharkay, whom he could feel hovering at the edge of the clearing. _We have history_.

Laurence smiled wryly, understanding Granby’s good humour, and sighed. “It’s true that I haven’t paid attention to it as I should have. I’m sure I could just - “

“Let me take care of it,” Granby broke in, before Laurence could comb it back with some water and call it a job well done. Laurence blinked at him, and Granby shrugged. “Growing up in the corps, the oldest boy was always the one who gets to plait the others’ hair when we were invited to real events. I still remember how to do it. I’m sure I could get you done in a trifle.”

Laurence glanced toward Temeraire, where the crew was readying the harness, eager to be gone before the sun disappeared completely. “Alright,” he said finally, overturning the water bucket and perching upon it. “Just be quick.”

Granby did retain some skill from his days of grooming his fellow aviators before parties, as well as some more recent attempts to straighten out his various lovers’ dress before they exited whatever clandestine space they were occupying. He didn’t explain the second bit of experience, but he did employ some of that technique on Laurence: brushing his fingers over Laurence’s cheek and neck while chasing stray hairs, and tugging just a bit too hard so that Laurence straightened, his back resting against Granby’s legs.

Laurence was warm in the cool evening air, and sturdy. His arms were still bare; they flexed every so often, as Laurence fought to stay centered on the small pail. Granby was intensely aware of his groin pressed against Laurence’s shoulder blades, and the heat of Laurence that he could feel through his breeches, all the way down his legs.

Laurence tipped his head forward when Granby reached the hair around his ears and neck. Granby let his fingers brush once more against Laurence’s neck, as slowly as he dared. He reached the end of the plait and regretfully tied it off.

Laurence stood, no sign of discomfort or struggles to hide any visible proof of pleasure from the impromptu petting. He didn’t even reach up to feel the plait. He trusted Granby not to make a fool of him.

“Make sure the eggs are strapped in tight,” he said, and picked up his coat. He strode away to Temeraire.

Tharkay appeared beside Granby. He joined the other man in staring after Laurence in a stupor of disbelief and resignation.

“I suppose _that_ was my warning,” Tharkay said. “How long have you been able to do that?”

“How long hasn’t he noticed, you mean? Since I met him. At this point I’d have to - well.” He bit down on the crass scenario he’d been imagining, remembering that this wasn’t like talking to Jacobs over a pint at Lavender House. “Rumor is he’s sleeping with Roland - her mother,” he added, when Tharkay tilted his head to spot out Emily atop Temeraire. “Captain of a Longwing. I don’t know it was his idea, though. Harcourt - well, she’s - anyway, word is that Jane had to practically dance atop a table with ostrich feathers before Laurence noticed anything amiss. Point is, I think we’d have to grow a pair of paps and appear in the nude for Laurence to catch on.”

Tharkay hummed thoughtfully. “And there are so few ostrich feathers to be found out here.”

Granby did a double-take. A small smile was curling up the side of Tharkay’s mouth. It really was an attractive mouth…

Laurence’s quiet but carrying call for the crew to board broke the moment. Granby looked around, realizing that the sun had truly set; he could barely see Tharkay after all. It was difficult to remain attentive to Tharkay’s mouth when Laurence was standing on Temeraire’s back, his broad-shouldered silhouette just visible as a black shadow against the cobalt sky.

Still, it was good to have someone at his side who finally understood Granby’s constant torment. There weren’t enough inverts in the service, he’d always thought. What luck to have found one with Granby’s particular slant all the way out here in the desert. With a bit more luck, Tharkay would stick around for a good while and relieve Granby of some of his anguish.

He wondered if it was too soon to ask Tharkay if he’d noticed the eye crinkles.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't remember if Temeraire & crew flew from the Sultan's palace to the Prussian front lines in one night, or if it took a few days. But at that point, I was having too much fun to worry overmuch about complete accuracy. I did find time to fill my history with Google searches of "gay terms 1800s" and the like.


End file.
